


Waiting For the Sunrise

by SublimeDiscordance



Series: On Life's Weary Seas [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Becketcest (Past) - Freeform, Chuck Lives, Explicit Sexual Content, Father/Son Incest, Fluff, Ghost Drifting, Hansencest - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Raleigh/Hansencest, Sibling Incest, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:12:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/SublimeDiscordance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After "Lies You Hide Behind," Raleigh, Chuck, and Herc all face the events of Operation Pitfall. And then they have to deal with the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Somehow I'm expecting your voice in my ear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Airwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airwing/gifts).



> Aaaand here's what happens afterwards. I promised Airwing I'd write a sequel to this if he wrote a sequel to his own Chaleigh oneshot. Either way, this was something that was dancing around in my head ever since I wrote "Lies You Hide Behind," so it was probably going to get written eventually anyway. However, our deal for sequels was pretty much the last push I needed, so... here it is! This work was initially going to be a oneshot, but decided all on its own that it wanted to be a threeshot. So there will be two more chapters coming up.
> 
> The story title comes from "Lonely Girl" by Oceanlab: " _Waiting for the sunrise / Staring into my eyes / You and I, alone..._ "
> 
> Epigraph:  
> "But desire, desire is long.”  
> – “Heat” by Jane Hirschfield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pitfall happens. And then it's over. Now, Raleigh just has to live with himself.
> 
> Chapter title comes from "Lonely Girl" by Oceanlab: " _Staring at the top sheet / Listening to my heartbeat / Wondering how to say it / Playing over one track / Wanting you to come back / Want to have you here / Lying on the cold sheet / Jump into my car seat / Drive down to the river / Night light is reflecting / Somehow I'm expecting / Your voice in my ear... / I wish that I could tell you / All the things that you do / Come back, 'cause I'm gonna be a lonely girl, again..._ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing/)

Raleigh runs a finger over the edge of one of the pieces of armor strapped to his leg, blatantly fidgeting and not finding it within himself to care.

“Raleigh,” Mako says softly, and he looks up to find her gaze calm and understanding, though there’s an undercurrent of sadness he understands all too well. When they’d drifted to fight Leatherback and Otachi, she’d caught a glimpse of what had happened between the blond and the Hansens. Though she’d whispered through the drift that it didn’t surprise her, that she, in fact, had almost counted on it happening—although the addition of Herc had been somewhat unexpected—she had been unable to hide her own emotions from him; regret, and a small, contained ball of jealousy held in place by an iron will.

Raleigh finds himself wishing they were drifting right now. He and Mako haven’t developed a ghost drift yet—something else he found buried in that little kernel of jealousy within the Japanese woman, because what made Chuck so special anyway?—and he wished he could somehow apologize to her in a  way that would mean something. He’d never intended to cause his partner unhappiness, even indirectly. And she understood that, he knew, just as she understood that part of the reason they would never be anything more than friends had nothing to do with her as a person and everything to do with the fact that Raleigh simply didn’t swing that way. He tries to convey the apology without words anyway, knows he shouldn’t be getting himself this worked up before a mission as huge as Pitfall, that it’ll only cause problems in the drift unless he can center himself. Mako seems to understand anyway, because the sadness in her eyes vanishes—though whether that’s because she genuinely doesn’t feel it anymore or that she’s just _that_ good at controlling her emotions, Raleigh doesn’t know—to be replaced by a fond exasperation.

“We have time,” she says, taking a step closer and placing a hand over his to stop his nervous motions. “Go tell him.” She pulls the hand in her grasp between her own and lifts it between their chests, applying a gentle pressure, neon-blue-framed eyes boring into his own. “You’ll regret it, otherwise.”

Raleigh finds himself thinking, not for the first time since he met her, that if he and Mako hadn’t become drift partners, if this whole war hadn’t happened, if they had met as just two normal people on the street, if he were to ever try to find love in a woman, then Mako would’ve probably been it for him. But they did, it did, and they didn’t. Even so, he finds himself loving her anyway—as a best friend, or perhaps in some way similar to the way he and Yancy had loved Jazmine while she was still alive—and, on impulse, leans forward and presses a small, chaste kiss to her forehead. When he pulls back, he can see that she’s smiling fondly, as if he’s behaving like a silly child. It reaches her eyes.

“Thank you,” he whispers, giving her hands a squeeze of his own before he turns and rushes out of Gipsy’s prep room, trusting the tingling, pulling sensation of the ghost drift at the back of his head to guide him towards Chuck.

 

 

When he arrives outside of Striker’s conn pod, Chuck is waiting for him.

“How’d you know—?” Raleigh starts, but feels slightly foolish when Chuck rolls his eyes exasperatedly and taps at his temple.

“Could feel ya comin’, moron. You’re really loud, I hope y’know.”

Raleigh can’t help but smile at the insult that, before they drifted, would’ve crawled under his skin and stung and burned. Instead, he can hear the fond undertone in the Australian’s voice now that he knows to look for it, and he can _feel_ the tingle of affection at the back if his mind that he knows isn’t his own.

The swelling happiness in his gut, though; that’s all him.

“I wanted to see you before you and Stacker left,” Raleigh says, answering the curiosity he can feel building in Chuck’s mind, looking around the two of them for a moment in confusion. “Where—?”

“I told him to go ahead, that I’d be in ‘n a minute,” Chuck answers, tone straightforward. “So whatever y’wanna say, better say it quick. We got a world to save, mate.”

It’s only then, when there’s a curl of something _cold_ floating across the ghost drift, that Raleigh notices that Chuck’s eyes are slightly red, and the skin underneath is slightly swollen. Like he’d been crying. Except, there are no tear tracks, and the redhead’s face lacks any signs of residual moisture. A feeling Raleigh can’t quite identify—anger, sadness, determination?—steels itself in his chest and he reaches forward, gripping Chuck’s upper arm tightly.

“Well,” he whispers, “I _was_ going to wish you good luck, but,” he trails off, gathering his courage before leaning forward and pressing his lips to Chuck’s in a chaste kiss. The Australian makes a soft noise of surprise before his own hand reaches out to grip Raleigh’s side, the sensation nearly lost beneath the drivesuit but still definitely there. Raleigh is more aware of the contact as a sense of the faint hum that Chuck’ presence has become at the back of his mind moving closer to him. Raleigh tilts his head slightly, chasing more of that closeness. Chuck moans as the angle changes, and he sweeps his tongue over Raleigh’s lips. The blond opens his mouth, an invitation to the other pilot, and is rewarded a moment later when Chuck dives in, slippery appendage exploring messily. The frigid feeling ghosting between them shatters, and is replaced with something warm and bright and _pulsing_.

Raleigh pulls back, committing to memory the way Chuck looks right now: eyes half-lidded, face flushed so that his freckles are almost—but not quite—hidden from sight, mouth slightly open, breath coming out in short but deep pants of desire. He burns— _sears_ —into his mind the way Chuck’s lips chase after his own even as the he moves away, and the whine that slips from the redhead’s throat, the sound both a complaint of loss and a statement of desire. Maybe it’s selfish, but, if he’s going to die, he wants to have this moment fresh in his mind, so that, if nothing else, his last fleeting thought can be of a blissed-out Chuck looking at him like he wants to tear their drivesuits off with his bare hands, end of the world be damned, and ravage each other right here and now. And if Chuck gets to have a happy moment on which to dwell, well…

Maybe that was the original point, anyway.

“Consider that incentive to come back in one piece, Hansen.”

He doesn’t say what he came to say. After all, with the ghost drift, the kiss, and everything left unsaid in Raleigh’s words…

He doesn’t have to.

Chuck knows.

“I will, I promise,” the redhead whispers against Raleigh's lips before leaning back in, mouth a brand against the blond’s. 

After all, Chuck’s not the only one who doesn't have to say anything.

 

 

Ghost drifting with Chuck while drifting with Mako is strange. It was strange the first time, but, now that Chuck is drifting with Stacker, it’s even stranger. Raleigh can’t exactly _feel_ their commander—he’s sure Mako has an even more vague sense of the man—but he can, if nothing else, tell the veteran is strapped in with them. Like an itch at the back of his mind.

“It is different,” Mako remarks aloud, and Raleigh looks over at her, responding with a pulse of confusion.

“You and Chuck,” she answers. “You have such a strong connection yet have only drifted once.” Her brows furrow together, and Raleigh can hear, can feel, her thinking rapidly, the mixed phrases of Japanese and English flying past his awareness too quickly for him to understand. He keeps his attention focused on keeping Gipsy moving forward, on Chuck’s voice as he calls out a countdown of the number of meters until they reach the Breach, until Mako speaks up again.

“Perhaps it is related to how strong your feelings for him are after only a few days,” she postulates. When Raleigh sends her a mental shrug and a, ‘ _Your guess is as good as mine_ ,’ she adds, “Not that it matters, ultimately. But it is curious. And different. A good kind of different, though.”

Raleigh can feel her smiling through the drift, can’t keep the smile off his own face as he sends a pulse of warmth and thanks her way, but keeps the bulk of his attention on moving the 1980-ton machine closer and closer to their final confrontation. Right before they take the first leap 600 meters from the Breach, Mako sends Raleigh one final thought on the matter.

‘ _I’m happy for you, Raleigh_. _Thank you for allowing me to share in your happiness_.’

And then the Kaiju are on them.

 

 

Raleigh feels the moment Chuck dies.

The ghost drift between them, of course, chooses that moment to flare to life—not as brightly and fully as it had when they’d had sex before, but brightly enough—and he and Mako both cry out at the pain that is followed by an endless void of silence. Raleigh tries desperately to not fall out of alignment, to push away the memories of Yancy’s death as they rush to the surface. His mind is so _empty_ even with his copilot there bracing him. He tries not to dwell on the fact that he feels like another half of his soul has been ripped away, and instead encourages Mako to brace their remaining chainsword in the ocean floor. He mentally coaches her through the pain—the strange, complete sense of _loss_ that had been, up until that moment, so unfamiliar to her and feels so _wrong_ , despite its being blunted through Raleigh’s perception—as the blistering heat of Chuck and Stacker’s funeral pyre washes over Gipsy’s skin, burning through their link with the Jaeger

When it’s finally over, they both know what they need to do.

Mind screaming, soul fractured, feedback from Gipsy’s missing arm and crippled leg still searing his nerves and leaving trails of fire on his skin, Raleigh allows Mako to pull him mentally to his feet and lead them to the Breach.

 

 

There’s a part of Raleigh that is disappointed when he wakes up in Mako’s arms.

He doesn’t have to be drifting with her to know that there is a shared affection between them, though it’s more familial than anything else. Regardless, he knows that if he’d died she would’ve been very, _very_ upset. In fact, that had been the only thought that drove him to get in that damn escape pod when he’d put Gipsy’s reactors into meltdown. After all, she had just lost her childhood friend, her father; she didn’t deserve to lose the only person who had peered into her mind on the same day. Not if he could help it.

Of course, it’s not until he’s in the bay of a Jumphawk, Mako plastered to his side as she mourns her father without a single tear lest the techs standing around see because this is _not for them_ , that he realizes what a fantastic idiot he’s been.

Mako’s not the only one who lost someone to Pitfall. Neither is Raleigh.

 

 

Raleigh shakes hands, makes nice, and accepts congratulations and well-wishes from the crowd of people that throw themselves at him and Mako. They both smile, but he knows that his partner is masking her pain just as desperately as he is. He feels like he’s drowning, like a jet running on autopilot that’s in the process of flying, screaming, into an unforgiving mountain side; like only one thing in the world matters right now, and he can’t _get to it_. He feels numb, detached, like the throngs of people around him aren’t really there, aren’t even real, because how can they be? How can they possibly _understand_?

Finally, they’re allowed to go to the assembly room and get their armor off and get dressed. Someone must’ve realized that they wanted to be alone, because when they reemerge, there are guards surrounding them and no one else in sight. Raleigh assumes they’ve gone to party in the main hall of the Shatterdome, to celebrate the fact that they’re still all alive. He can’t bring himself to care, one way or another.

Mako turns to him in the blessed quiet, eyes sincere.

“Find him, Raleigh,” she says firmly. There are tears pooling against her lashes now that they’re mostly alone as she speaks her first words to him since she pulled him out of a malfunctioning escape pod. “He needs you more than I do. I will be fine. He will not. _You_ will not.”

Raleigh says nothing at first, Mako’s understanding boggling him until he remembers that she’s been _in his mind_ , she knows how he thinks, what he feels, the ways in which he breaks. He lets out a whispered, soft, “Thank you,” some of the tension in his spine leaking out with the words as he takes her face in his hands and plants a soft kiss to her forehead, a mirror to the one he left before the battle.

Then he pulls away and moves down the hallway, every ounce of willpower necessary to keep him from outright running.

 

 

He finds Herc in the quarters the older man shares— _used to share_ , a part of his mind whispers sadistically—with Chuck. While wandering through the halls, Raleigh had noticed the door was open, in and of itself an oddity, had investigated, and had been rewarded with the sight of the older man sitting on the edge of the conjoined beds, face in his hands—well, in one hand, his other is still in a sling.

Slowly, he steps into the room, swinging the door shut behind him. It closes with the same, loud sound it always does, but for some reason it startles Herc, the older pilot whipping around in surprise. When he catches sight of Raleigh, though, the fiery expression he’d initially forced onto his face vanishes into nothingness, replaced instead by a grief Raleigh understands all too well. Raleigh stands there for a moment, unsure what to do, unsure what will make Herc snap, what will make the older man send him away, before he eventually throws caution to the wind and takes a step forward. When nothing happens, he takes another step, then another, and another, until finally he’s standing at beside Herc. The older man’s eyes never leave his.

Raleigh sits down on the edge of the bed beside Chuck’s lover, copilot, and father, and he feels some spark of something Chuck left behind in him responding to the other man, pushing at the walls he’s been able to keep up so far; they crack and finally give way. Tears blur his vision before he can stop them, and his head bows as words fall from between his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, the sound garbled and broken through the gorge rising in his throat. “I’m so sorry, Herc, I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t… I… I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t start fully crying until Herc twists on the bed and wraps his good arm around Raleigh’s shoulders, hand rubbing soothing circles into the blond’s back. Raleigh doesn’t even try to stop the tears as they swell and fall from his lashes, leaving cold tracks down his cheeks. He just clutches desperately at the man beside him, trying to hold on to the one thing left in his life that still makes any kind of sense.

“It’s okay, kid,” Herc tells him, even though Raleigh can tell from his tone that it’s really _not_. “It’s alright. It’s gonna be okay.”

And that’s when the sobs come, ripping their way from Raleigh’s body with an intensity that makes the whole bed shake. He can feel each one as it wells up, threatening to burst in his chest, and then it does exactly that, clawing its way out of his mouth with a terrifying force that only further serves to remind him of the thermonuclear blast that took the light he’d so recently rediscovered away from him. His throat burns. It’s only after the spasms work their way out of his body for a few minutes, showing no sign of slowing down, that he realizes he’s still speaking.

“—’s all my fault, I, I _tried_ , I tried _so damn hard_ , couldn’t get to him, couldn’t stop them, couldn’t—I couldn’t—I can’t—I don’t know wh—I’m _so sorry_ , he’s _gone_ and I never told him—”

Raleigh snaps his teeth shut with such tremendous force he tastes blood from where he bit his tongue, and the muscle spasms that come with the sobs force his jaw to clench, to grind down, to reopen whatever wound in his mouth is trying desperately to heal. He _is_ drowning, now. Drowning in his own grief and confusion and pain and the three quarters of his mind that are haunted by ghosts that will never go away, that will remind him of everything he has ever lost, ghosts that will empty him out while also at the same time, leaving a yawning void inside his mind that nothing will ever be able to fill. He’s dimly aware that Herc is still speaking to him, is still telling him it’ll be okay, and he latches onto that—not the words, but the sound of the older Ranger’s voice.

Without even thinking about it—he _can’t_ think about it right now—Raleigh lifts his mouth to Herc’s, the older man’s chapped lips the only thing that don’t hurt.

Herc pulls back slightly, surprise easily visible in his eyes even through the blur of tears, but Raleigh reaches out towards him, hands uncoiling from around the older man’s body to reach tentatively, desperately, for his face. He stops, though, not willing to take something that isn’t offered.

“Please,” he whispers, voice absolutely wrecked in all the wrong ways as shudders continue to wrack his whole being. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Herc denies him in this moment. “ _Please_.”

And then there are lips on his own again, and he whimpers into the touch, whimpers again as he feels the older man desperately ripping at his clothes, finesse gone in the wake of _need_. Raleigh pulls back to allow Herc to get the blond’s shirt over his head, and before they rejoin their lips, Raleigh lets the thought that’s been floating at the back of his mind find voice.

“ _Make me feel something again_.”

It isn’t pity. It isn’t love, at least not right now. It’s two men, horribly adrift and lonely, needing to do something as basic as remind themselves that they are human and that they can do basic things like have emotions, feel something; _be_.

They don’t even bother with foreplay. Herc gropes blindly for the lube that was still sitting on the bedside table where they’d left it not twenty-four hours ago, somehow managing to get the cap off and coat his good hand in the slick as soon as Raleigh’s pants are gone. He thrusts two fingers into the blond right away, and Raleigh hisses at the burn but rocks back onto the fingers, desperate noises falling from between his lips. After less than a minute, though, when Herc hasn’t even added a third finger, Raleigh grabs the lube and pours some into his own hand, reaching behind him to coat Herc’s weeping cock with it.

“Do it,” he implores the older man. “Please. I need it.”

“Kid, m’not gonna hurt you—” Herc starts, but then Raleigh rolls over and forces the other man down onto his back, straddling him. It’s a cheap shot, he knows, since the other pilot doesn’t have his other arm to steady himself, but he’s beyond caring.

“ _Please_ ,” he’s begging now, rubbing his barely-stretched hole against the head of Herc’s cock, unwilling to actually take this one step further and sink down without the other man’s permission. “I can take it. I need it to hurt. I need to _feel something. Please_.”

Perhaps it’s his tone, still so broken, or perhaps it’s the tears that are still streaming down his face as he places sloppy kisses against Herc’s mouth. Regardless, Herc pulls back to speak, murmurs a soft, “Okay, kid. I’m sorry,” before he forces his cockhead into Raleigh.

He cries out into Herc’s mouth. The older pilot is definitely larger than average, especially in girth, and Raleigh can _feel_ it, that’s for damn sure. Even so, it’s not enough.

Raleigh steadies himself, then pushes insistently downward, forcing the molten length inside of himself, still whimpering. Tears refill his eyes as the feeling of being split in two, of being torn apart, registers in his mind, but he pushes it all aside and keeps going. He needs to do this, to know this pain, to feel something— _anything_ —and feed the void in his mind. He’s almost halfway down when he hears Herc’s voice pierce through his whirling thoughts.

“Kid, _stop_ , you’re gonna hurt yourself!”

On any other day, the tone of genuine worry would’ve made Raleigh do just that, would’ve made him stop and reconsider. Today, though, there’s too much silence, too many dead.

“Good,” he utters, before he braces himself and sinks down fully, seating Herc’s entire length inside of him.

The pain almost blinds him, even as a pulse of pleasure sings through his body as Herc’s entire length rests hotly against his prostate, grinding into it relentlessly.

“ _Raleigh, listen to me_!”

The words fly through his mind, and everything else drops away. The voices in his mind—Chuck and Yancy—vanish, and abruptly it’s only Raleigh and Herc, the older man’s cheeks stained with Raleigh’s tears as the blond’s ass throbs hotly.

“You need t’ _stop_ , kid.”

Herc has bent himself at the waist, is holding on to Raleigh’s upright body as tightly as he can with one arm, and is staring into his eyes imploringly.

“He wouldn’t want you t’do this.”

Instead of answering directly, Raleigh lifts a hand to the older man’s face and wipes away his tears that have stained the Australian’s cheeks. When new ones take their place, he realizes that _Herc_ is crying, too. The knowledge sends a pang of regret coursing through Raleigh’s body, and he shudders, eyes burning as his tear ducts protest being refilled.

“It’s okay,” Raleigh eventually says, hips rolling as he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” He’s lying, though only partially; it does hurt less, the more Herc presses on that bundle of nerves inside of him. “It’s okay, Herc. Please. I need you to make me feel it later.”

Herc shakes his head sadly. “He wouldn’t want this for you, Raleigh.”

The words make something ignite to life within the blond’s chest, and he clenches around Herc’s length, making the older man moan.

“Well then maybe he shouldn’t’ve have died.”

Raleigh takes advantage of the shock that colors the older man’s face to flip them over and pull the Australian on top of him as he leans back, wrapping his legs around Herc’s waist. “Now, _fuck me like you mean it, old man_.”

The words seemed to trigger something in the other pilot—maybe Raleigh had pulled them from one of the memories he’d borrowed from Chuck; maybe that was cheating; maybe he didn’t care—and he growls,  pulls back, and pounds into Raleigh at full tilt, not pausing before he does it again and again and again, assaulting Raleigh’s prostate with every frenzied movement.

They come together not a minute later, tears in their eyes and white behind their eyelids.

Just before they drift off to sleep, Herc’s release seeping out of his gaping, protesting ass, Raleigh reaches up and tangles his fingers in the older man’s hair, pulling him down for a sweet, slow kiss.

“Thank you,” he whispers into Herc’s mouth. “I love you.”

Some part of him is surprised that the words had wandered from between his lips, that he’d said such a thing aloud. That same part is equally surprised to find that he _means_ it. Perhaps it’s Chuck’s ghost coloring his perceptions, or perhaps he and the older pilot have actually found something meaningful together. Either way, the blond doesn’t want to analyze it right now. Herc’s surprised, answering rumble is the last thing Raleigh hears before unconsciousness claims him.

 

 

He’s wakened from a dreamless sleep by furtive pounding on the door. Raleigh hears Herc mumble several choice phrases as he makes his way towards the other side of the room, then flings the door open, modesty apparently absent. Raleigh makes sure he’s covered, though with him in Herc’s bed and the Australian at the door in his birthday suit, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

“What the bloody hell is it?” the older pilot asks, rubbing a tired hand on his face as he blinks in the light from the hallway.

The tech at the door blushes, eyes tracking between Herc and Raleigh, but, smartly, does not look down.

“It’s just, sir,” he stammers, “they found another escape pod. It’s your son.”

Herc’s entire body goes stiff. Raleigh can’t help the small gasp that leaves his lips; hope courses through him like a benevolent fire.

“Why wasn’t I told?” Herc’s voice is deathly quiet, deathly calm.

“We didn’t know the pod had been found until they brought it in, sir,” the tech tells them. “He’s in really bad shape. They’ve got him in medical right now.”

Herc flings the door closed in the man’s face, striding around the room and pulling on clothing.

“You heard the man,” he tells Raleigh, tone and expression unreadable. “Let’s go.”

 

 

Raleigh and Herc don’t even try to maintain decorum; they simply throw on clothing and run to medical. Raleigh’s ass twinges the entire way, but he lets the pain remind him that he’s alive, that _Chuck_ is alive, and it keeps him from flipping his ever-loving shit when the doctors tell them that they can’t see Chuck because he’s in surgery. Internal bleeding and shattered bones, they said.

After waiting for six hours— _six hours_ —another doctor finally comes out to tell them that Chuck is stable and has been moved to the ICU for observation, but that they can see him now.

When they first enter the room, Raleigh and Herc each taking up on opposite sides of the bed, the blond barely recognizes Chuck. He looks so small in the hospital gown, tubes hanging off his arm and leg wrapped up, like he’s missing some vital spark that made him take up the whole room before. Without a word, each of them grasps one of Chuck’s clammy hands, pull up a chair, and wait.

 

 

Raleigh’s on the verge of dozing off, the soft sound of the monitors lulling him to sleep, when the hand he’s holding squeezes back.

He looks up, shock and alarm and hope warring for places in his gut, and sees those brilliant grey-green-blue eyes staring back at him. On the other side of the bed, Herc is still holding Chuck’s other hand, soundly asleep.

“H-hey,” Raleigh manages to get out, emotions nearly choking him.

“Hey yerself,” Chuck grits out, voice rough. His tone carries an unmistakable hint of pain despite his smile, and Raleigh finds himself reaching out almost instinctively to place a palm against the younger pilot’s cheek.

“I thought I’d lost you,” the words are out of Raleigh’s mouth before he can even think about them. Chuck shakes his head slightly, obviously trying to avoid too much movement.

“Nah, mate,” he says, squeezing Raleigh’s hand again, “I promised. I keep my promises.”

 


	2. Hands held in silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck is back and alive, but some wounds take more time than others to heal. 
> 
> Chapter title comes from “Lonely Girl” by OceanLab: “ _Lying in the long grass / Watching as the clouds pass / Hands held in silence…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE IT ISSSSS! Chapter two! Next up on the list of things to work on is Chapter 8 of Nothing Here. And then Chapter 3 of this. And then another story in this 'verse. ~~I have plans for at least four others beyond these two...~~
> 
> So, uh, this chapter was supposed to be kinda fluffy and happy. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha. Yeah, right... That _totally_ worked out...
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing/) (GO READ HIS FICS HE'S AWESOME)

After Chuck wakes up, Raleigh doesn’t leave his side for four days. For those four days, he holds Chuck’s hand as the other man drifts in and out of unconsciousness, caused both by exhaustion and the heavy sedatives and painkillers the doctors are pumping into his veins. Raleigh refuses to let go, even when the nurses ask nicely, long suffering smiles on their faces. He barely touches the food the staff brings him, using his free hand to eat when he remembers to do so, and he hardly reacts at all whenever any of them try to talk to him about maybe going back to his room to get some rest in a real bed. The only time Raleigh lets go is when he needs to use the bathroom or when Herc orders him to do so, the latter of which the nurses are quick to exploit when they need to take Chuck’s vitals. It’s on that fourth day, when the staff say they need to draw blood for some additional tests, to make sure there’s no other organ damage they missed, that Herc finally takes him aside, the older man’s forearm wrapped in a close-fitting cast up to his wrist that prevents him from rotating and dislodging the broken bone. The doctors have already started the other pilot on the now-standard fracture repair treatment that accelerates the rate at which his body lays down new bone in the affected area (Raleigh knows from experience that it burns and itches like hell), but it will be at least another week before the cast can come off.

“Raleigh,” the older man sighs gently, running a hand down the side of the blond’s face as his other palm, the one on his injured arm, lands on Raleigh’s waist and pulls him close. “You can’t keep this up, kid. They need to work, and you need to take care of yourself.”

Raleigh lets the older man clasp him by the back of the head and pull him down to rest his head on the broad, muscled chest in front of him, feeling Herc’s warm breath as it ghosts over his scalp. He wants so badly to just relax, to let his body go limp in the older pilot’s arms, but he can’t. Chuck is awake, yes, but he’s not _better_ , and Raleigh’s head is still so very empty. He doesn’t know how to explain that feeling of loss—the feeling of having not one, but _two_ deaths constantly replaying themselves in his mind the second he allows his eyelids to close—so instead he says the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I felt him die, Herc.”

He hears the heartbeat beneath his ear stutter, and the hand near his waist—which had been rubbing soothing circles into his hip—freezes.

“It was through a ghost drift, but it… I still felt it. I felt _him_ , I _could_ feel him, and then… then I—I _couldn’t_. I still can’t. I can’t _feel him_ anymore.”

The words are tumbling out of Raleigh’s mouth now, soft and uneven, and he’s distantly aware that his vision is blurry and his cheeks are wet. It feels like something writhing and horrifying is worming its way out of his mouth, _forcing_ its way out, and he’s powerless to stop it.

“After Yancy died, I… there were a couple of times I thought he came and visited me in the hospital. I kept hearing his _voice_ , always just around the corner, or just outside a door, or something. I was so convinced that he was _right out there_ that I ripped my IV out twice because I thought they just wouldn’t let him in and I—” He chokes on the words, not wanting to give voice to this thing—this _one thing_ —that could destroy him completely if it’s true. “Even after the first time I didn’t want to believe that it was all in my head, y’know? I convinced myself that he’d survived somehow, that I’d gotten my brother _back_.”

Raleigh pulls away, straightening so that his eyes are level with Herc’s.

“I can’t… I can’t leave him, Herc. I don’t know if I could stand it if he’s not real, either. If I go to sleep for too long, I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and this will all be a dream and I’ll still be in that damn escape pod, suffocating and wanting and _wishing_ about what could’ve been. I just, I _can’t_ —”

The hand on the back of Raleigh’s head pulls him forward, and then there are a pair of chapped but soft lips covering his own, swallowing his words, his worries. He whines in the back of his throat, trying to pull away, but then he feels his whole body relax as Herc’s grip turns gentle, the kiss morphing into something a little _more_ when the older man’s tongue swipes along Raleigh’s lips and plunges forward as the blond gasps. Some part of Raleigh wants to fight—still wants to pull away because _what if Chuck is gone when this is over_?—but then Raleigh feels the solid form, the _reality_ , of the man beneath his hands, and he decides that, at the very least, this, he knows, is real. This time, when Herc’s tongue dives back in, Raleigh’s meets it head on, the blond moaning into the other man’s mouth. He grabs fistfuls of the shirt underneath his fingertips, trying desperately to hold on even as he feels like he’s drifting away.

It’s Herc who pulls back, then, steely resolve in his electric blue eyes that’s almost, but not quite, masking an expression of blatant worry. Raleigh leans towards him, lips seeking the comfort, the familiarity—no matter how fleeting—Herc’s touch offers him once again, but is rebuffed by an almost tentative pull from the gentle grip the older man still has on the back of his neck.

“Y’need to take care of yourself, kid,” the older pilot whispers, gaze commanding, tone bordering on pleading.  “You’ll be no good t’him if he wakes up when you’re in a state like this. I promise, I won’t let him out of my sight, not even for a second.”

Raleigh feels his tired mind rolling the possibility over, examining it from every side, but ultimately lacking comprehension. He needs to _stay with Chuck_. He can’t leave. He can’t. He just _can’t_.

“Herc, I—”

“Raleigh,” the older man interrupts him, a wealth of meaning and emotion behind the single word, a quiet plea buried in its depths. The grip at the back of his neck bears down ever so slightly, and Raleigh somehow manages to resist the urge to flinch. “Please. Don’t make me order you, kiddo. You need _sleep_.”

Something hot wells up in Raleigh’s throat at the words, but he swallows the unfamiliar emotion back down, allowing an uneasy acceptance to wash through him as he looks away and nods.

“M’kay,” he mumbles to the floor, the tiredness he’d been holding at bay by sheer force of will suddenly catching up to him. He would’ve collapsed to the floor if not for Herc’s grip shifting to under his arms, holding him up.

“Alright then,” Herc grunts, and Raleigh tries to make an effort to apologize, but he can’t seem to get his mouth to work right. Instead, all that comes out is a sad groaning sound. “Let’s get you t’bed, kiddo. C’mon, nice and easy, one step at a time.”

Slowly, almost painstakingly, Herc guides Raleigh out of medical and towards his quarters. The trip normally takes five minutes. It takes them closer to fifteen.

When they finally arrive at Raleigh’s door, Raleigh puts his lock code in with arms that feel like lead, and the next thing he knows he’s got his mattress at his back and a blanket up to his chin as Herc runs a hand soothingly over his scalp. When the older man braces his hands on his legs, conceivably to get up and leave, Raleigh’s sleep deprived mind panics.

“Please stay,” he whimpers. He doesn’t miss the way Herc’s face pinches at the words.

“I’m just gonna go stay with Chuck, a’right? Won’t be but a page away,” the older man answers, placing Raleigh’s tablet beside the bed, easily within arm’s reach, and moving to get up again.

“Herc,” Raleigh barely recognizes his own voice, how desperate and _worn_ it sounds, “please don’t go.”

Something in the older man’s face crumbles at the words, and after a moment he stands and moves towards the door again, the action eliciting a whine from the back of Raleigh’s throat.

“Hush, kiddo,” Herc placates him, voice gentle as he reaches for the screen set into the wall by the door instead of the door itself. “Just gonna call Mako, have her watch over Chuck in case anything changes.”

Raleigh relaxes at the words, eyes sliding closed, but doesn’t allow himself to surrender into slumber just yet. He can hear the quick, quiet _beep_ as the comm connects to the console nearest Mako, hears her and Herc exchange soft words, followed by the muted _blip_ of the comm disconnecting. It’s only when he feels the mattress of his small bunk dip with added weight and Herc’s arms encircle him that he finally, at long last, begins to drift away. Just before he falls away, though, his mouth forms tired words, the consonant sounds slurring at the edges.

“Jus’ wanna hear h’m ‘gain...”

“I know, kid,” Herc whispers back, a tender kiss being placed on Raleigh’s forehead.

“Love y’.”

The words spill from between Raleigh’s lips without any conscious input from him. Before he can process _why_ he said the words—only having enough time to be sure that it is, in fact, _him_ saying them, not some remnant of Chuck in his mind—he’s gone, mind dropping into thankfully silent darkness.

He misses the way, a moment later, the limbs holding him tighten incrementally, and the quiet, but hopeful, “Love you too, kid,” that’s breathed into his skin.

 

 

After that, Raleigh, Herc, and Mako keep watch over Chuck in turns. The redhead is still kept heavily sedated due to the amount of pain he’s in—the doctors were actually discussing a medically-induced coma until Herc nixed the idea altogether—and sometimes he’ll be lucid enough to realize that there’s someone there, though more often than not he’s either asleep or mumbling quietly to himself. Herc has taken to making sure that Raleigh eats at least one full meal each day and gets at the _very_ least six hours of sleep every night. It had become increasingly easier after the third time Raleigh had asked the older man to stay with him; now, they spend the nights curled together in the Hansens’ quarters. Raleigh always takes the left side of the bed—Chuck’s side in all things, apparently, from sleeping to fighting Kaiju—and buries his face in the sheets, trying to convince himself that if he just breathes deeply enough, Chuck’s scent will still be there: a combination of sweetgrass and a salty ocean breeze, undercut with motor oil from working on Striker at all hours.

The ghost drift between them still hasn’t come back. Raleigh finds the emptiness left behind when Chuck ‘died’ vibrating uneasily in his head when he stops and sits still for too long, phantom pain and memories filling the void. So he tries to distract himself, whether that’s by focusing on Chuck as the younger man breathes in and out softly, or talking to Herc or Mako or even, when he’s desperate, the hospital staff. On one memorable occasion, on a day that the memories of Yancy’s death are closer to the surface than normal, Herc all but drags him back to bed from the hospital after a few hours and proceeds to make Raleigh writhe in pleasure until he can’t think straight anymore, the yawning chasm in his mind blessedly silent—the kind of silence he craves—for at least a few hours.

 It’s still incredibly disconcerting to no longer be able to hear, to _feel_ , Chuck at the back of his awareness. Sure, he and the kid had been ghosting for only a few days, but in those few days Raleigh had been reminded why he missed Yancy’s similar, constant presence. Ghosting with Chuck, as improbable as such a thing was after only a single drift, had silenced the nightmares, the never-ending refrain of Yancy’s last words ( _Raleigh, listen to me! You have to—_ ), his brother’s last emotions ( _feardisbeliefconfusionlove_ ); his brother’s last thoughts ( _—o sorry Rals I’m so sorry please forgive me I love you baby brother I don’t want to die don’t want to leave you don’t want you to hav—_ ), sent to Raleigh over the drift in the half-second before the older Becket had been ripped away. Chuck had made Raleigh feel whole again. And now he’s left with not one, but two dead souls haunting his mind. All he wants is to get Chuck back.

“Get better soon, Chuck. Come back to us,” Raleigh whispers, placing a kiss on the back of the unconscious redhead’s hand as he clasps it tightly in his own. Around him, the monitors beep steadily, their rhythm unchanged.

 

 

“Why did I feel him die if he’s not dead? Why can’t I hear him anymore?”

It’s almost midnight, and Raleigh is lying against Herc’s chest as he tries, and fails, to fall asleep. The questions have been bouncing around his skull incessantly for the past week and a half, ever since Herc finally convinced Raleigh that sleep was still a necessary part of life, never mind that it hadn’t been a _regular_ part of the blond’s life since his brother was torn from his mind. Behind him, Herc grunts softly, the hand he has propped on Raleigh’s waist—the arm finally cast-free as of that morning—stroking up and down ever so slightly.

“Dunno, kid. No one really understands ghosting. Me n’ Chuck used to do it sometimes, but not all that often. Never the way you said you two did.”

Raleigh feels the older man shrug, and he snuggles back into the Australian’s embrace, needing—always needing—the touch to keep him grounded, to remind him that this isn’t in his head, that this is _real_. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time in the last few days that he’s had dreams almost exactly like this.

“I mean,” Herc continues, “if I _had_ t’guess? The docs said that he was borderline comatose when they fished ‘m outa the water. He probably got knocked out ‘n hurt bad ‘nough that it _felt_ like dyin’. Or, maybe, I dunno, maybe he _did_ die for a few seconds. What did’ya say it felt like, again?”

The words alone are still enough to pull the memory out of Raleigh’s mind, fresh as it is, playing back across his mind’s eye. He shivers, trying to burrow impossibly further into Herc’s arms.

“It, it _hurt_ , Herc. One second he was there, alive, panicking, y’know, but alive, and so, so stubbornly determined.” Raleigh can’t help the wet laugh that escapes his lips, and he blinks rapidly, wondering when tears started falling down his face. Taking a breath, he continues, words soft, as if he can push the memories away more easily if they aren’t given as loud a voice. “And then, there was just _pain_ ,” the word cracks in the middle, but he forces himself to keep going, “and then I just, I just _felt_ it, like a piece of you gets ripped away as if their mind tries to hang on to whatever it can when it goes and it pulls a part of you away with it. It was like getting your skull torn in half, like getting your soul _burned_ in half… but, Herc?”

Raleigh looks back, his eyes desperately seeking the other man’s steel-blue orbs in the dark as he gives voice to the persistent thought that he hasn’t yet allowed to leave his lips.

“I didn’t even have half of mine left to start with.”

As the words leave his lips, he feels his whole body tensing, a pressure trying to push its way out of his chest as his eyes fill with tears again.

“It’s so empty in here, Herc,” he whispers, voice strained, broken. “It was already empty without Yancy and it’s so much more empty without _him_ , and I just want him back—I _need_ him back. I only had him for a few days and I already can’t imagine not having him ever again. I don’t want to stay like this forever—I don’t know if I _can_. I just, I don’t know what to _do_.” The salty liquid tracks down his cheeks, landing on the pillow and Herc’s upper arm where it rests beneath Raleigh’s head. “I don’t think I can do this, Herc.”

“Hush, now, kiddo,” the older pilot whispers, hand coming up from Raleigh’s hip to gently swipe away tears with a thumb. “‘M sorry I made you remember about all that again. I shouldn’t’ve asked. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

He looks so sincere, so hopeful, that all Raleigh can do is nod and lay his head back down, trying to contain the sobs that threaten to burst from his chest and make his whole body convulse in the other man’s arms. He turns around so he’s facing Herc, and buries his face in the spot where the older pilot’s shoulder and neck meet, feeling the steady beating of the man’s heart against his cheek. He feels a hand tangle in his hair—it’s getting too long, he finds himself musing, and he almost laughs at the absurdity of the notion given their situation—and blunt fingers massage his scalp soothingly. He doesn’t quite sigh at the attention, but it’s a near thing.

“It’ll be okay, Rals,” comes Herc’s voice, and it sounds suddenly far away. Raleigh breathes deeply, taking in the scent of the older man, both musky and sweet, and exhales noisily. As he does it again, he hears the Australian holding him add, “It has to be,” the arms around him tightening fractionally.

 

 

When they take Chuck off his medication, effectively waking him up again, he makes his displeasure known. Loudly.

“Jesus _fuck_ , why does everything hurt so badly?”

Even though he _still_ can’t feel Chuck’s presence at the back of his mind, their ghost drift silent for the entirety of the two and a half weeks since Pitfall, hearing the redhead’s voice again—even if it’s cranky and in pain—helps hold the emptiness at bay.

After Yancy had died, Raleigh had found an old voicemail left on his phone from his brother from one of the mornings that Raleigh had gotten up especially early because he’d been unable to sleep—a common occurrence, even in those days. It was a short message, asking the younger pilot if he’d be willing to pick up breakfast while he was out and about. Raleigh had apparently forgotten to delete it at the time. Any time the gnawing void at the back of his awareness had been too much, if ever the memories of Yancy’s final moments had threatened to overwhelm him, to smother him with their weight, he would desperately, with shaking fingers and tear-stained eyes, pull out his phone and bring up the recording of his brother’s voice, always listening to the way that Yancy had sounded so happy, so carefree; so _alive_. Focusing on that, instead of the fact that his brother was _dead_ , was _gone_ , was usually enough to help him hold himself together.

Then, three months later, his phone had deleted it automatically.

Raleigh’d had his first panic attack—his first _ever_ —that night.

This time, though the wound is more grievous—as he’d told Herc, he hadn’t started completely whole—having the older Australian to hold him, to reassure him every time he felt that old panic, that old darkness and doubt and _fear_ , creeping up on him, had proved to be invaluable. Honestly, Raleigh is willing to admit that, without the older man’s solid presence to pull him back from the brink, he probably would’ve eaten a bullet after the first week, regardless of whether or not they’d actually rescued Chuck. It would’ve been selfish and wrong, he knows that—he _would have_ _known_ that—but his mind has been so scrambled, so fractured, that he doubts it would’ve made a difference.

But he has Herc. And they found Chuck. And, now, Chuck is awake. So, really, all the rest is unimportant detail at this point.

For the first time in weeks, despite the gaping emptiness he still feels in his head, Raleigh finds himself smiling.

“I dunno, Chuckles, is it normal for a human being to survive a point-blank nuclear explosion in a lump-of-plastic escape pod that was never really meant to withstand a normal explosion, never mind a nuclear one?” the blond asks, trying to keep his tone light.

“Oi, fuck off! I’m serious, here. Why does everything hurt so much?”

Raleigh sobers in an instant at the way Chuck’s face has gone pale, the smattering of freckles—goddamnit, this is not the time to be thinking about how _cute_ those freckles are—across the bridge of the redhead’s nose and cheeks standing out in stark relief.

“Do you need me to get someone?”

Chuck shakes his head, gritting his teeth. “I just wanna know _why_ , mate. What the hell happened to me? I remember Stacker ejecting me, I remember the bomb goin’ off, then… nothin’ for a while. Then I remember wakin’ up with you here at some point, and then nothing again.”

Raleigh opens his mouth to explain, but the words refuse to come out. Every time he tries, the memory of those hours without Chuck—the way he’d gone crawling to Herc, had demanded that the older man _hurt him_ , just to make him feel something, _anything_ , again—slithers across his mind, constricting his throat. Thankfully, Herc intervenes.

“Y’had a bunch of injuries, mostly internal, that they put y’into surgery for. You came in with some broken bones n’ whatnot, too, but they got those squared away pretty quick.” Raleigh finds himself thinking he’s actually glad Chuck was asleep for that part. Most likely, the redhead probably would’ve been cursing up a storm at the constant ache and burn of his bones quickly knitting themselves together. “They were more worried y’had organ damage they didn’t catch, but they checked and said everything looks okay, just needs time to heal.” Herc looks thoughtful for a moment before adding, “Oh, and, by the way, congrats, sprog; you’ve officially got no spleen. Completely ruptured, I think they said. Had to take it out. Y’ also may or may not’ve died on the operating table once or twice.”

Chuck laughs lightly, presumably at some inside joke the two of them share—Raleigh wracks his mind, sifting through the memories he got through his drift with Chuck, and comes up with nothing—but then sucks a harsh breath in through his teeth. He must catch sight of the way Raleigh’s features scrunch up at the sound, because he calls out to the blond a moment later.

“No, I’ll be alright, Ray. It’s fine.”

“But—” Raleigh starts, fully intending to point out that Chuck had been woken back up because the doctors thought— _thought_ , not _knew_ —that his pain levels would be more tolerable now, but that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion, when Chuck interrupts him.

“ _Rah_ leigh, mate, I’ll be fine. If you can pilot a damn Jaeger back to shore alone after—uh, yeah, after… then I can stand this. This is nothing.”

Something hot flares to life in Raleigh’s guts.

“Chuck, you don’t have to do this for me. If you hurt, that’s fine, I can go get the nurse or a doctor or—”

“I said, I’m _fine_ , Ray. Please, just. Stay?”

When Raleigh shares a look with Herc, not answering right away, Chuck adds, “It helps when you’re closer.”

Which is how Raleigh ends up where he’s been for the past two and a half weeks all over again, holding a sleeping Chuck’s hand while the redhead breathes in and out evenly. Except, this time, Chuck’s sleep isn’t fitful or punctuated by unhappy, drugged groans; instead, it’s quiet, his hand keeping a solid grip on Raleigh’s where the blond has tangled their fingers together. He looks so peaceful. It’s mesmerizing, how carefree and _young_ the other pilot looks, and Raleigh has to remind himself that the redhead is only twenty one years old; the same age Raleigh was when Yancy, reaching out, was torn from the drift, taking some of his younger brother with him and leaving some of himself behind in its place. Raleigh lets his fingers wander over the veins on the back of Chuck’s hand, feeling the steady flow of blood beneath his fingertips as he counts the small smattering of freckles he finds there for what feels like the thousandth time. He looks up at Herc, who is on the other side of the bed, face somehow managing to be both pensive and tentatively happy.

“Can you get the nurse to get him something anyway? Maybe put it in his IV?” Raleigh asks him.

Herc meets his eyes, understanding reflected in their depths, and gets up and closes the door behind him. Because, while it’s true that Raleigh had endured a whole new meaning of pain the day he piloted Gipsy alone, that doesn’t mean he expects Chuck to do the same. He stands, reaching forward to press a kiss to the younger pilot’s forehead without breaking the hold the other man has on his hand, then sits back down to wait.

The last thing Raleigh wants to do is expose Chuck to more pain. Especially if he can do something about it.

 

 

It isn’t until later that night, Herc’s even, deep breaths warming the back of his neck, that Raleigh realizes that ghosting with Chuck again means that the redhead will be forced to experience _exactly_ that, courtesy of Raleigh’s memories. Helplessness swims through his chest like a shark that’s scented blood. He finds himself shuddering, body wracked with tear-free sobs that he has to fight down to prevent himself from waking the man at his back.

He doesn’t find sleep that night.

Or the next.

 

 

It’s another week before the doctors release Chuck from the hospital.

It’s done with little fanfare; most of the staff, techs, guards, and so on have already returned to their countries of origin, leaving the Shatterdome hallways feeling surprisingly empty. Even so, Raleigh helps Chuck back to the room the younger man shares with Herc—the same room Raleigh has been sharing with the older pilot for the past almost-four weeks—despite the nerves clawing in his gut. Up until now, he’s been relatively okay—not _good_ , but okay—and has been able to keep himself in one piece. Now that Herc and Chuck will be back together, though…

Raleigh doesn’t know where he fits anymore. After all, his feelings for Herc he can at least justify because the older man has been there for him this whole time, acting as his anchor, his fixed point, to keep him from floating away or, worse, falling under and drowning. But the entirety of his feelings for Chuck are based off of one night together before the double event and the oddly strong ghost drift they share— _shared_ , he has to remind himself with no small pang of sadness. Raleigh knows that such fleeting things are no basis for a relationship, or even for a legitimate _attraction_ , and yet here he is, helping Chuck back to his room and wondering if the Hansens will allow him to stay or toss him out like the shattered piece of detritus he is. Cast him out and leave him to rot where he belongs.

He doesn’t know what exactly the two men feel for him. He hasn’t bothered to ask.

He doesn’t know if they’ll even want someone so broken.

“Would you shut up, already?” Chuck whines, putting a little more weight than necessary on Raleigh’s shoulder as the younger pilot huffs in annoyance. “I may not be able to hear your thoughts again yet, but you’re being _really_ fuckin’ loud right now, Ray.”

It’s the first time Chuck has commented on the fact that their ghost drift is gone, and the fact that the redhead is talking about it in terms of something that will come back makes Raleigh’s stomach do flips. Despite that, though, he can’t escape the dragging, almost crushing feeling in his chest.

“Sorry,” he apologizes softly. “I just…” The words taper off as he tries to think of a way to phrase his thoughts that won’t sound like he’s being clingy or needy—though he’s well aware that he’s both of those—or begging. “Now that you’re awake and you and your dad are together again I don’t know if you’re going to want m—”

“Shut your fucking mouth.”

Raleigh blinks, surprised, at the tone of Chuck’s voice. It’s, in a word, _angry_.

“But—”

“Ray, you can either stop talking right fuckin’ now, or so help me I will fuckin’ knock you over your thick skull and get back to the room on my own. Now _shut_. The _fuck_. _Up_. An’ help me walk. We’ll talk when we get there, but unless the next words outta your mouth are ‘I’m the biggest, blindest sod on the face of the Earth’ then I don’t wanna hear it.”

They walk the rest of the way in silence.

 

 

Raleigh sits on the edge of the bed, Herc standing over him with his arms crossed while Chuck glares at him from the sheets. The silence from the hallway has persisted and infected the Hansens’ living space, because somehow Chuck has apparently communicated _both_ the fact that he’s pissed at the blond _and_ the reason—to which Raleigh is still not privy—to his father without uttering a single word. Raleigh would think they were ghosting if he didn’t know better. He fidgets nervously under their combined gaze, eyes falling to a stray thread on the end of the left sleeve of his sweater that he starts to pick at. He starts counting his slightly-too-fast heartbeats, and gets to twenty-seven before one of them finally speaks up.

“We’re not getting rid of you, Raleigh,” Herc says, voice attempting to be soothing. Raleigh can’t bring himself to look at the older man’s eyes, so instead he just nods at the floor, waiting for the inevitable ‘but.’ He feels like there’s a knife slowly sliding between his ribs, and it’s quite suddenly more difficult to take a breath in.

“Ray, we’re not, okay?” Chuck’s sincerity makes the knife twist, and Raleigh gasps lightly at the flare of pain in his chest. He keeps nodding, the motion almost mechanical. He just wishes they’d get it over with.

“Raleigh—” Herc starts, voice still gentle, tentative, when he’s overridden by his son.

“Would you just listen to us, ya sodding moron? Stop picking at that ugly fucking sweater of yours and _listen_ for once in your _goddamn_ life!”

Raleigh’s not quite sure what it is, whether it’s the fact that Chuck is insulting him, and so this is familiar territory for them, or perhaps it’s the anger, the same anger from the hallway, that’s coloring the redhead’s words. Regardless, Raleigh finds himself peering up to catch Chuck’s eyes as they _burn_ at him. The redhead’s face has turned an almost-adorable shade of pink, and the blond pilot would allow himself such thoughts if not for the fact that this time it’s obviously the result of barely-contained rage.

“We’re not getting rid of you, _alright_? I, for one, will kick dad’s arse—nuke or no nuke—if he even thinks about it. I,” Chuck’s mouth moves for a moment without words coming out, as if he’s trying to figure out how his thoughts are supposed to translate into sound, “I _like_ you, alright Ray?”

A hand lands on Raleigh’s shoulder before he has time to process the words—the impossible words—coming out of Chuck’s mouth, and he startles, looking up and around until his gaze settles on Herc’s electric blue eyes as they bore into his own.

“We both like, you kid,” Herc whispers, the words barely audible over the sound of the blood pounding past Raleigh’s ears—over the sound of the _silence_ in his head—as the older man’s grip tightens incrementally. “We’re not gonna send you away. Not unless you wanna go.”

Raleigh feels a pressure build up in his chest, pulsing and pushing and straining to get out until, finally, the dam breaks, and he finally allows the full-body spasm of a sob to pass through him. His body nearly sags in relief as he stops trying to control his every motion, to hold back the loss, the _despair_ , he’s been feeling. He lets the floodgates open, and allows himself to finally, at long last, be drawn into the arms of both of the men who somehow, in one short month, have come to mean so much to him. He knows words are falling from his lips, words like _empty_ and _need_ and _alone_ and _can’t_. Herc and Chuck, though, respond with words like _anything_ and _give_ and _together_.

The Hansens swallow Raleigh’s fears, they swallow the hollow pain in his mind, and they swallow the void in his heart, and they answer him with _love_.  

Above all, though, they answer him with _hope_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be out in the next two weeks. Or sooner, depending on how much time I have ~~School is KILLING me... Killing me dead...~~ With luck, itll be a lot less angsty than this chapter. Also, uhm, there will be smut. Not copious smut, but definite smut. ^_^;;
> 
> As always, comments and constructive criticism are more than welcome.


	3. Feeling like I’m home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys try to get Chuck and Raleigh ghost drifting again. Results may vary.
> 
> Chapter title comes from "Lonely Girl" by OceanLab: “Your arms right around me / Feeling glad you found me / Feeling like I’m home…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knoooooow, I'm supposed to be posting a chapter of Nothing Here instead of this, but this chapter would NOT LEAVE ME ALONE. It doesn't help that I've been in a slump for the past week or so. It also doesn't help that my queue on tumblr [spit a prompt back at me](http://ohhaiguise.tumblr.com/post/75701844881) and I immediately was like "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO WRITE THAT NOW" and so I am... Horray, another WiP!
> 
> Also, uh, I dunno if this merits a warning, but this chapter contains some smut again? Yeah... *rubs at back of neck nervously* Enjoy?
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/Airwing/)

The first thing they try is the drift simulator.

Raleigh nearly sobs in relief as Herc’s countdown reaches zero and he’s flung into Chuck’s mind. Unlike before, this time there is no push and pull, no give and take, no wrestling for control. This time, there is simply the drift, waiting for them like a humming, contented cat that stretches lazily between their minds. Their thoughts don’t so much merge as they simply… cease to be separate. One moment, Raleigh is himself, broken and twisted and _empty_ , and the next he is drifting with Chuck and he doesn’t feel so alone, the redhead’s presence an almost tangible thing in his mind. He allows himself to revel in the sensation, in the memories that are not his own flowing past him, at the feeling of _wholeness_ that comes with no longer being alone with the ghosts in his head; ghosts that he makes sure to keep suppressed, lest he permanently scar the mind of the man to whom he’s connected. He feels the residual pain of Chuck’s injuries, his frustration at being on lockdown for so long, his _worry_ over Raleigh. Raleigh actually manages to catch a glimpse of himself from Chuck’s point of view before the redhead scrambles to conceal it, mental whispers and pleas going unheeded as Raleigh examines the image more closely.

He looks, in a word, terrible. There are bags under his eyes, his cheeks are slightly sunken, and even he can see that his clothes are way too baggy and are not being filled out properly by the body beneath them. Put another way, he looks like death warmed over.

‘ _How long have I looked like this?_ ’ he questions Chuck. The answer comes back a few moments later, almost hesitantly.

‘ _Since I woke up. Dad said…_ ’ but before the words can finish, the memory flows between them.

“What’s wrong with him?” Chuck is whispering to his father, the two of them holding on to a shivering Raleigh as the blond curls into the older man’s chest, blankets wrapped around them like a cocoon. Judging from the way Chuck is still rolling around slightly in obvious discomfort,Raleigh thinks that this memory is likely from the first night after Chuck was released.

“I can’t get him to eat, Chuck,” Herc answers, voice sounding so _weary_ that Raleigh feels another piece of his heart break. “He doesn’t sleep much, either. Wakes up, most every night, screaming for you or his brother, sometimes both. Only good I can find is he doesn’t seem to remember it, come morning.”

Something cold settles in Raleigh’s gut as the memory evaporates, the blond finally letting go of it long enough to allow Chuck to stuff it back into his mind.

‘ _Why didn’t either of you tell me?_ ’

Something akin to a mental snort passes between them.

‘ _Tell you what, mate? ‘Oh, by the way, you’ve kept me ‘n Dad from getting a good night’s rest about every night the past week because you have uncontrollable night terrors that you don’t bloody remember because you felt two people fucking_ die _while connected to them. But don’t worry about it, I’m sure everything’s fine.’ Yeah. Sure. That would’ve gone over swell, Ray. Why d’you think we were so desperate to have us jump in here together?_ ’

‘ _So that you can get your beauty sleep again?_ ’ Raleigh sends wryly, the words still causing a spark of something colder still to dance about the frozen lump in his belly. He knows the Hansens aren’t doing this for themselves—at least, not entirely—yet a part of him can’t help but wonder if maybe they’d be better off without him. After all, as Chuck had said, at least then they’d be able to sleep.

‘ _No you fucking moron,_ ’ Chuck’s thoughts carry a distinct heat of anger that feels like a candle’s flame licking over his skin, ‘ _because we fucking_ care _about you, dipshit. We could care less that you’re waking us up, it’s the part where, y’know, you’re_ not sleeping _that has us worried. And stop thinking that we’re going to leave you over this shit. We told you, you’re stuck with us. Idiot._ ’ The last word is sent over with a feeling of something alarmingly close to fondness. As if to further accentuate the point, though, Chuck drags up the memory from before, playing back the rest of it.

“I’m scared, dad,” Chuck whispers into Raleigh’s hair, the words puffing the blond strands ever so slightly. “What do we do?”

Herc sighs into Raleigh’s neck. “I don’t know, kiddo. I don’t know. Only thing I can think of is to get you two ghosting again. It might help, but I just... I just _don’t know_.”

“I—We can’t lose him. We can’t. I don’t, I… I can’t even think about it.” Chuck’s gaze peeks over Raleigh, heavy with meaning as he stares his father in the eye. “Dad, I… I lo—” Chuck’s voice is cut off as he seems to choke on air, the obviously unfamiliar words lodging in his throat. Before the memory of Chuck can manage to speak again, though, Raleigh waves the memory away, dissolving it into colored mist.

‘ _You don’t have to show me, Chuck_ ,’ he says. ‘ _I know. I can feel it, right now._ ’

He tries to project the same warm feeling suffusing the drift from Chuck back at the redhead, injecting it with memories of time he’s spent watching over Chuck’s bedside, of the times Chuck has kissed him, of the moment he realized how empty his life would be if he never got to have the younger ranger by his side ever again.

‘ _Me too_.’

 

 

It doesn’t work.

They both ease out of the drift after several hours, and, as they do, Raleigh’s mind feels like a water balloon that’s been poked with a pin. He can _feel_ Chuck’s presence sliding, dripping, _leaking_ out of him as they surface from the drift, and, in a blind panic he latches on to anything he can, trying desperately to clutch at that feeling of _wholeness_ before it leaves him again. Chuck cries out in surprise and pain at the neural feedback the action generates, and Raleigh’s own surprise and horror is enough to make him instantly stop and let go, whatever part of Chuck he might've been clinging to escaping his grasp completely.

Still nearly panicked, he practically tears himself out of the harness and flies from the simulator. On the way out of the prep room, after he’s ripped the facsimile of a drivesuit from his body, he passes a worried-looking Herc,ignoring the concerned questions thrown his way. He won’t, _can’t_ , accept that offer of comfort right now, because he _hurt Chuck_. He hurt one of two things in his life that still make any kind of sense, and he doesn’t know what to do about it—doesn’t know what he _can_ do about it. So, instead, he does the only thing he knows.

He runs.

 

 

He hides out with Mako. She doesn’t ask, simply nods when he says that he needs a place to be away from the rest of the world for a little while. The dark circles under her eyes convey her understanding far more than any words ever could.

It takes the Hansens two days to find him, since Chuck can’t track him through their ghost drift anymore. Two days of hiding out with Mako in Stacker’s old quarters, of his copilot sneaking him food from the cafeteria, of her becoming increasingly deprived of sleep by the nightmares he still doesn’t remember. The Hansens’ interest is apparently piqued when they notice that the Japanese woman isn’t staying in her own room anymore—though she tells Raleigh after they question her that she told them she’s staying there to keep the nightmares at bay, which isn’t entirely untrue—but they become truly suspicious when they catch her sneaking an entire tray of food out of the canteen. According to what he’s told later, they decide to follow her, and have their suspicions confirmed when they hear her say Raleigh’s name in greeting as she opens the door.

Truthfully, the entire time is a complete hell for the blond. It’s not that he dislikes Mako—far from it—but she’s not what he _needs_. Without Herc or Chuck nearby, the memories resurface more often. Memories of being pulled up, away, into the ocean. Memories of light, sound, and ablazing inferno, and then nothingness. She _gets it_ , sure—after all, she felt it, too, even if it was slightly muted—and it’s amazing to spend some time with her after being separated for so long. After all, he loves her intensely—platonically, but intensely nonetheless—and knows that she’s probably the closest to a soul mate he’s ever going to find. But, even so…

When Chuck and Herc find him, they simply knock and, after she opens the door, the younger Australian proclaims, “Your copilot’s a moron and we want him back.”

She doesn’t even try to deny them, simply steps out of their way. Raleigh shoots her a betrayed look, but she just shakes her head at him.

“They may _want_ you back, Raleigh, but you _need_ them back.”

Raleigh’s not entirely sure, but he thinks it’s the unmistakable ring of truth in her words that has him leaving without a struggle. He hugs the small Asian woman on the way out, whispering a soft “Thank you,” in her ear. He doesn’t have to say what for.

She understands.

 

 

Once the three of them make it back to the Hansens' room, Herc doesn’t say anything. He simply stands by the door, silent, arms crossed, expression both stern and worried. Raleigh can feel the steel blue eyes burrowing into the side of his head from where he’s sitting on the bed, shoulders hunched, head in his hands. Conversely, Chuck yells at him. Tells him it was stupid and moronic and idiotic and several other colorful variations, though at the end of the day they all point to one singular fact: Raleigh shouldn't have run.

"I mean, seriously, mate? What the _fuck_?" The younger pilot is gesticulating wildly and progressively turning a deeper shade of pink, slowly moving closer and closer to the bed where the blond is sitting. "Why the _fuck_ did you run?"

Chuck grabs Raleigh's jaw in both hands, pulling until the blond is forced to look up into Chuck's blue-green eyes from where he’d been gazing steadfastly at a point by the redhead’s knee. Raleigh resists at first, feebly, simultaneously craving the attention and hating himself for wanting it. However, when he finally does look up, relenting after only a moment, it’s to come face to face with tracks of moisture down Chuck’s face. And then it hits him.

Chuck is crying.

Chuck is crying and Raleigh has no idea why.

“Why _’_ d you _run_?” the younger ranger asks him, sounding for all intents and purposes like a lost child, and, yeah, Raleigh may or may not have forgotten that Chuck really is just a fucking _kid_.

“What’d we... what’d _I_ do to make you think y’had t’ _run_?”

Raleigh blinks at the redhead for a moment before, suddenly, several things crystallize in his mind.

Chuck is crying.

Chuck is blaming himself for Raleigh running.

The last thing Chuck probably felt from Raleigh in the drift was a sudden sense of panic, and then _pain_ , before Raleigh had bolted out the door and vanished for two days.

Chuck is _crying_.

The blond almost winces as the pieces start to fall into place. If these two days have been hell on him, he can hardly imagine what Chuck—self-centered, always-have-to-do-better, never-good-enough, always-my-fault Chuck—has been going through

“What? No, Chuck, it wasn’t you, it was me. I,” he chokes on the words, “I _hurt_ you.”

Raleigh feels like someone has him pinned on his back and the heel of a steel-toed boot pressed against his throat, but he forces himself to speak anyway. “You tried to help me and I ended up hurting you and I just couldn’t... I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting you like that, and I’m sorry that me running away made things worse for you, but I can’t... I _still_ can’t...”

 _I still can’t hear you_.

 _I’m still alone in here_.

The thoughts echo in his mind, reverberating off of the limitless, gaping void and bouncing back to him until they become a mantra that repeats itself relentlessly. Raleigh can _feel_ them swirling around him, filling him in a way that is terrifying in its _wrongness_. He knows that Chuck is talking, is saying something, but for some reason he can’t hear him over the sound of nothingness that is suddenly pressing at his ears, pulling at the edges of his vision, and some part of his mind registers a vague sort of panic crossing the redhead’s face before Chuck is turning away, mouth still moving, gesturing at something.

And then there are strong arms wrapped around Raleigh’s shoulders, and it’s only then that he realizes, beneath their solid warmth, that he’s _shaking_.

Sounds return in a rush, the blond’s head spinning with the sudden onslaught of sensation. Someone—Herc, he’d recognize that voice anywhere—is whispering in his ear.

“—ay, alright Rals? S’okay. We gotcha. Not letting you go, kid. Chuck’s not angry with you. He was just scared. We both were. And we’re not going anywhere. Gonna take more than an accident to get rid of us.”

Raleigh lets the words filter through his mind, finding a place to settle and find meaning, before he raises his blurry, distorted vision to gaze at Chuck, hands coming up to grip almost desperately at the limbs encircling him. He blinks once, and suddenly he can see the redhead so much better, something wet and burning making its way slowly down his face.

“I’m sorry,” he finally manages to whisper. “I’m sorry, please don’t—”

 _Please don’t leave me_.

He never gets to say the words, though, because Chuck is placing a hand over his mouth and putting his own tear-filled eyes inches from Raleigh’s.

“Don’t even think it,” is all he says, before he moves forward, embracing Raleigh as well, sandwiching the shaking blond between their bodies.

 

 

It’s not until several days later, when Herc and Chuck have left the room to go down to the canteen to pick up food for the three of them, that Raleigh gets an idea. Moving as quickly as he can—he knows he has maybe fifteen minutes before the Hansens return—he gathers what he needs and sets to work. When the Australians step through the door twelve minutes later, three trays of food balanced between the two of them, Raleigh nearly laughs at the twin expressions of shock on their faces—he imagines that, maybe, five years and two soul-shreddings ago, he probably would have.

Instead, he lifts his legs higher in the air, plunging his four lube-covered digits in and out of his ass with abandon, trying to give his best ‘come hither’ look to the two men. He curls his fingers inside of himself, feeling for his prostate, and can’t help the wanton moan that escapes his lips as his back tries to bow at the pleasure when he finds it.

“Fuck me sideways,” Chuck breathes into the silence.

“Only if you do me first,” Raleigh retorts, spreading his fingers within himself to stretch himself further before, oh-so slowly, pulling them out, relishing in the obscene sound they make as they reappear one knuckle at a time.

After that, everything blurs into motion.

Chuck is suddenly _right there_ , food abandoned on the desk, and Raleigh is scrabbling desperately at his clothes, wanting, _needing_ , to get at the skin underneath. He forcefully pulls the younger ranger’s shirt over his head, running his hands down the toned chest he finds underneath, soft tufts of dark red hair sliding between his fingers as Chuck works at his own belt with fumbling digits. Raleigh pulls the redhead forward when the belt finally comes undone and the pants and underwear underneath are yanked down in one jerky motion, letting out a moan when he feels Chuck’s rock-hard arousal brushing against his well-stretched hole. Chuck lets out an almost inhuman sound of his own, rutting into Raleigh’s skin, flared head rubbing and catching against the relaxed ring of muscle. He bends over the blond’s body to latch onto Raleigh’s neck, teeth scraping and gnawing, tongue laving, lips sucking, and Raleigh is almost certain he’s going to have one hell of a hickey when all this is over.

Herc joins them then, already naked, bright blue eyes darkened  by desire. He sits down on the edge of the bed, hand running over Raleigh’s raised thigh, grip gentle. Raleigh reaches for Herc’s burgeoning erection, though, the older man puts a calloused palm on the blond’s wrist, halting the motion.

“Is this _really_ what you want, kid?” he asks the younger pilot, a tremor in his voice. Raleigh nods, careful not to hit Chuck in the side of the face with his jaw where the redhead is still marking up his neck.

“It… it worked last time.”

Herc’s eyes get impossibly softer, kinder, more understanding.

“But are you sure it’s what you _want_?”

At the words, everything stops. Just, completely stops. Chuck holds himself over Raleigh’s body, lips disengaging as he simply breathes in and out heavily, the cold warmth whispering against the bruised skin beneath him. Raleigh whines from the loss of sensation, wriggling in the combined hold of the two pilots, desperate to no longer feel alone, desperate to just _feel_. Chuck’s cock rests against his spread ass, throbbing against his entrance.

“Yes,” he gasps out when it becomes obvious that the Hansens aren’t going forward until he says the words. “Yes. _Please_. I _need_ this. I need _you_.”

There’s a beat of silence during which the grip Herc has on Raleigh’s thigh tightens before relaxing, the older man’s eyes sliding shut as he nods.

“Alright then, kid.”

Herc gets up from the bed, and Chuck resumes his attack on Raleigh’s neck, drawing Raleigh’s attention away from the older man’s absence for a few seconds. In the few seconds it takes the fact that Herc’s no longer at his side to really click in Raleigh’s mind, Chuck’s father has returned with a bottle of lube and has squirted a dollop of it into his hand, reaching back to run it over his son’s dick. Raleigh feels Chuck’s breath hitch at the contact, but what truly grabs his attention is the feeling of the younger ranger’s blunt cockhead as it pushes at his opening. He lets out a long sigh when Chuck finally breaches him, the Aussie’s molten length filling him exactly how he’d hoped.

“ _Yes_ ,” he breathes when Chuck finally bottoms out in him, sparks of pleasure coursing through his body in waves as the redhead’s swollen cock grinds against his prostate. “Fucking _yes_.”

When Chuck pulls back and slams himself home again, Raleigh’s fingers grab at the back of the other man’s neck and tug him back. Chuck’s eyes are alight and his face is so painfully open that Raleigh has to suppress a shiver before hauling the redhead back in, their lips crashing together with an almost brutal force. Raleigh almost misses the other man’s usual quips, but when he flutters his internal muscles, drawing a groan from between Chuck’s lips that he happily swallows down, he decides that finding ways rendering the other man speechless is much more fun.

 

 

After Chuck empties himself inside of Raleigh the first time, the blond nearly tackles Herc, relying on the seed dripping out of his abused hole to pull the older man’s considerable girth inside of him. He’s already loose from the sound fucking Chuck gave him—the aforementioned redhead laying, spent, on his side, watching with wide eyes as Raleigh rides his father—and in no time at all he’s sliding up and down Herc’s cock without trouble. But it isn’t enough.

So he plays dirty. He raises himself up until just the older man’s swollen cockhead is inside of him, then clenches down with his muscles and barely moves, remembering from his time with Yancy ( _the memory tries to overwhelm him as soon as the thought flashes across his mind, but he brutally drowns it instead_ ) how maddeningly _inadequate need more please fuck give me more_ the action is. He’s rewarded several moments later when Herc _growls_ and grabs Raleigh by the shoulders, flipping the younger ranger over and reversing their positions so that the blond is now on his back, the older man plowing into the body beneath him with a strength that Raleigh was expecting but still manages to surprise him.

And then Herc does something Raleigh _wasn’t_ expecting. He grips the blond under the arms, hands splayed behind the younger ranger’s shoulders for leverage, and actually _lifts_ Raleigh into his lap, the new angle assaulting Raleigh’s prostate with each thrust. Herc’s cock is being driven deeper than Raleigh thought possible, thrusting into his pliant body as the older man holds him in his arms. Raleigh doesn’t know what to do with his own arms in this new position, and he settles for wrapping them around Herc’s neck, latching their mouths together, tongues colliding, teeth clacking, blood singing. Herc eventually pulls back and pushes his forehead to rest against Raleigh’s, looking the blond directly in the eye with his steely orbs, something thrumming between their locked gazes that feels almost like the drift but is so, so much deeper. Raleigh wants to look away, the feeling of _connection_ , of being literally _joined_ to this man before him so intense that it almost makes him cum right then and there.

But it’s _still_ not enough.

“Fuck,” he whines into Herc’s mouth, lips catching on the older man’s stubble as he tries to form words amidst the grunts and groans that filter out of his mouth. “Fuck, Herc, I need _more_.”

Almost as one, they turn to gaze at Chuck, who looks like a deer caught in the headlights.

“What’re you two blockheads lookin’ at me f—”

“He needs _more_ , Chuck,” Herc murmurs, almost as if he’s reading Raleigh’s mind, putting subtle emphasis on the words. “C’mere.”

It takes a couple seconds, but then the light behind Chuck’s eyes ignites, and his cock is suddenly rock hard again. However, he still looks unsure.

“Rals, you sure—”

“Stop fucking asking and just _fuck me_ already,” Raleigh interrupts him, the words ending in a moan as Herc’s arms slam him down particularly forcefully at an angle that has him seeing stars. He feels like his skin is too tight, like if Chuck doesn’t get over here and fucking _fuck_ him _right fucking now_ then he’s going to explode.

Chuck seems to need no more confirmation than that, because, the next thing Raleigh knows, Herc’s hands at his back are accompanied by Chuck’s broad chest. The redhead has latched himself onto Raleigh’s shoulder this time, teeth scraping in delicious rows of sensation.

“D’ya think I should finger him open some? Loosen him up a bit more?” Chuck asks, the words directed at his father, and Raleigh nearly _screams_ that he’s not going to get any looser than he already is, but Herc beats him to it.

“I think he’s getting’ a bit impatient. Might wanna just go for it if you wanna keep your dick attached.”

Chuck gives a grunt in acknowledgement before Raleigh feels him line himself up and push.

The moment Chuck actually manages to get inside of him, Raleigh _does_ scream from the sheer wall of pleasure that slams through his body at being so _full_. Chuck swears and makes to pull out, but Raleigh reaches back and grabs the redhead’s hips, gritting from beneath clenched teeth, “Don’t you dare. _Give it to me,_ ” as he pulls Chuck towards him, forcing inch after delicious inch of the other ranger’s arousal inside of him.

“Jesus fuck, kid,” Herc swears—though, who he’s talking to, Raleigh’s not sure. “So fucking _tight_.”

When Raleigh feels Chuck’s pelvic bone pressing against his too-full ass, his eyes nearly roll back in his head at the knowledge that he has _both cocks inside of him_ and it feels _fucking fantastic_. He can feel every twitch, every throb. He can feel their fucking _heartbeats_ , and some part of his mind notes that the two Hansen men are beating in sync, their cocks swelling together in time inside of his body. He bears down experimentally on the two lengths inside of him, and gets twin moans from the two men.

“Fuckin’ _fuck_ , Ray—”

“Kid, you keep doin’ that an’—”

Raleigh does it again.

It seems to tip Herc over the edge of whatever semblance of self-control the older man was keeping, because he pulls back and slams himself back into Raleigh’s willing body, his cock practically grinding the blond’s prostate to dust with every movement. Chuck starts moving a moment later, setting up a syncopated rhythm with his father, the redhead’s thrusts not making direct contact with Raleigh’s prostate, but instead making a sort of variation in the pressure Herc’s cock applies; Raleigh doesn’t particularly care, all he knows is that his entire body is _singing_.

Raleigh tries to help the Hansens along, tries to do something to give them pleasure other than simply exist as a hole for them to rut against each other inside of, but he’s too far gone, too completely and totally _fucked_ , to even attempt to coordinate his body at this point. He just keeps up a constant stream of noise, words—a mixture of babble and filth—continually falling from his lips as his pleasure builds and builds, approaching its inevitable crest. Chuck keeps up his own monologue in Raleigh’s ear, telling him how hot his ass looks suspended in the air like he is between the two Hansens, how good he feels, how fucking mind-blowing it is to see him taking two cocks like it’s nothing. The words simply fuel the fire of arousal roaring in Raleigh’s gut. Herc goes between sucking his own marks into Raleigh’s neck, and swallowing the sounds the blond makes, occasionally forcing a few of his own down the younger ranger’s throat.

Then, though, Chuck leans over Raleigh’s shoulder, using his right hand to pull his father towards him, their lips meeting right in front of Raleigh’s face. Raleigh sees Chuck’s tongue dart out and force its way between Herc’s lips before the older pilot returns the favor, licking into his son’s mouth.

Raleigh comes on the spot, his vision going first white and then black, his cock coating his and Herc’s chest in his release.

The Hansens make their own noises of pleasure—Raleigh’s pretty sure Chuck _screams_ —to be swallowed down by each other as his internal muscles clamp down on their cocks, and they fill him simultaneously, a warmth suffusing Raleigh’s entire body.

Chuck pulls out first, collapsing to the bed in a boneless heap. Herc lays Raleigh down on his side, following, still inside the blond. The older ranger makes to pull out, but Raleigh grips him by the base of his still-half-hard cock, throwing a leg over the other man’s body and forcing him onto his back. Despite the buzzing under his skin from just having a literally mind-blowing orgasm, he manages to bear down on the length within him. Herc moans, probably as over-stimulated by the action as Raleigh is by the way Herc’s cock is _still_ rubbing against his sore prostate, making him shiver with every pulse of the older man’s heartbeat. It doesn’t help that he can _feel_ the cum inside of him shifting every time he moves, adding another layer of sensation.

“I’m not fucking done with you,” Raleigh whispers, trying to force the heat of arousal _still_ swimming in his belly into the words. “Not by a long shot.”

 

 

They fuck for _hours_ , stopping only once when Chuck complains he’s hungry for them to eat the now-cold trays of food. Raleigh pretends to be chewing on a piece of roast beef, his appetite practically nonexistent, until the other two pilots finally finish and resume their previous activities. By the end of it, Raleigh feels so _full_ and _contented_ that he simply… falls asleep, both of the Hansens once more wedged inside his now-aching ass.

Though he’s not awake for it, Chuck is the one who disengages and gets a towel to clean them all off, placing a tender kiss on Raleigh’s forehead and his father’s lips before the two of them drift off, the blond held between them.

 

 

Raleigh dreams that night of being held, of warm arms wrapped around him safely. It’s only when he looks up to see his own face staring back down at him as claws tear him from those arms— _his_ arms—and fling him into the ocean that he realizes this is Yancy’s dream.

This time, when he wakes up screaming, he remembers it.

 

 

It doesn’t work. Again.

As soon as Raleigh wakes up the next morning, ass screaming at him in protest in a way that’s just barely crossing the boundary of ‘just-been-fucked’ good, the fullness—the _happiness_ —from his multiple orgasms last night is completely gone. He lays in the arms of the two men who are coming to mean so much to him—the two men who are quickly becoming the center of his world—and panics. Eventually, though, he becomes cognizant of a need to use the bathroom, and he forces his trembling limbs to climb out of bed and over Herc’s body, heading for the sliding door. He hears the older man give a sleepy mumble from the bed, and tries to move faster, to avoid the incoming questions asking ‘how are you?’ and ‘do you want to talk about last night?’

But something goes wrong. Raleigh’s legs suddenly cease to exist, and the whole world tilts. He thinks he makes a confused noise of some kind, but he can’t be quite sure; everything sounds so far away. The next thing he knows, the floor is rushing up to meet him at an alarming speed.

The last thing he hears is Herc’s voice, shouting his name.

Then everything goes black.

 

 

“God damn it _Rah_ leigh, you stubborn bastard, I know you can hear me.”

The words filter through Raleigh’s awareness, but they don’t mean anything: just a series of disjointed sounds that lack connection.

“The squiggly line piece of shit is saying you’re awake, Ray, so come on, wake the fuck up.”

“Chuck, just ‘cause he’s awake doesn’t mean he’s _awake_ yet. Let him wake up.”

He recognizes the voices, the tones, but the words still aren’t connecting, still lack some sort of meaning.

“I don’t fucking _care_. The docs said he’s suffering from fucking _malnutrition_. How the _fuck_ can that happen to him when we’re fucking _watching_ him?”

“Chuck, listen to me, I know you’re scared, but—”

“No, fuck you, old man! What if we hadn’t noticed? What if he’d hit his head or something, or passed out in bed where we couldn’t fucking _tell_ that he was dying instead of asleep?”

“Kid, c’mere, you need to calm down—”

“ _No don’t touch me I_ ’ _m fucking calm_ , alright? Do you not get it? He could’ve _died_. He could’ve _died_ and I never fucking told him that I—”

There’s a choking sound. The words are bouncing off of the edges of his mind, now, pinging lightly, sparking. Raleigh feels like if he could just _grasp_ at them—

“He knows, Chuck. He can’t _not_ know. Not after all this.”

Everything returns in a rush, the disjointed sounds, words, catching fire and igniting a roaring blaze in Raleigh’s mind. His eyes fly open, and he looks around the room, almost in a panic. He’s lying on his back, he can feel that much, but the ceiling is white and unfamiliar. He glances down and can see Herc and Chuck standing beside his bed, face-to-face. He tries to speak, but all that comes out at first is a gagging sound that draws the attention of both Hansens. He has to clear his throat to try again, both of them staring at him in the moment it takes, shock plain in their features.

“Chuck?” he rasps out. “Herc?”

In less than a second both of them are at his side, leaning over him, practically smothering him with affection.

“Don’t you ever do that to us again, y’hear?” Herc whispers into his hair, placing a kiss on top of Raleigh’s head. Chuck, for his part, has pressed his face into the crook of Raleigh’s neck, breathing deeply.

“I won’t,” Raleigh promises, and he knows that he means it. Despite the fact that, even now, the prospect of food makes his stomach churn uneasily, he knows he doesn’t want to worry Chuck and Herc like this again. “I’m sorry, guys.”

He raises a shaking hand to Chuck’s hair, tugging lightly to get the redhead to pull back. Chuck complies, moving under Raleigh’s weak guidance until they’re face to face, noses scant inches apart.

“I do know, Chuck,” he whispers. “And I know I haven’t said the words, haven’t really _told_ you how I felt, but—”

“Ray,” Chuck whispers against his lips, eyes closing as he shakes his head, “you don’t have to say it. I told you in the drift, I know.”

“And I _know_ that,” Raleigh says, slightly more forcefully than he intended, but he continues on anyway. “I know, but I have to say it anyway, alright? Because, Chuck Hansen, I love you.”

Chuck’s eyes spring back open, mouth forming the almost-inaudible words, “I know, and I… I love you too, Raleigh,” as tears gather on his lashes. He looks like he _needs_ to be kissed, so Raleigh pulls lightly on the hair still clutched weakly between his fingers and does just that.

The second their lips touch, the bottom drops out of Raleigh’s mind again, and he gasps at the waves of sensation that assault him from every direction, drowning out the ghosts and filling him with _light_ and _love_ and _Chuck_. He’s swimming in the redhead’s mind, the other pilot right there with him, and, all at once, he just _knows_ with complete certainty—or is it Chuck’s certainty?—that they’re going to be okay. After all, they have this, they have _each other_ , again.

Except this time is different.

This time, Herc gasps, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote! (For this part anyway) More parts to come soon, as soon as I finish one more WiP. Or maybe sooner, if I get inspired xD
> 
> Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated. Also, if you guys have something you'd like to see happen with our boys here then let me know!


End file.
